Well, my CPU is dying really fast and I really doubt it will survive another month. I got an offer for a new in box 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 HT for about USD70 (kinda cheap for the prices here), but I don't know if it will work well in my old mobo. My motherboard is a PCChips M925 and it works with Socket 478 processors. The 2.8 CPU works with 478, but like the mobo is old and really crappy (had troubles with tons of stuff) I would like to be sure that it will work before buying it (I'm not in the mood to throw 70 bucks to the trash :lol. Thanks a lot in advance.
do you know more info on the cpu?? That board will take the following p4 2.8 Ghz cpu's: P4 - Northwood 2.8 GHz (512K,533,Socket 478) P4 - Prescott 2.8 GHz (1M,533,Socket 478) here is the cpu support list for your board from manufacturers website : http://www.pcchips.com.tw/PCCWeb/Pr...2&LanID=0&DetailID=271&DetailName=CPU Support
That mobo looks like an update of the one I have (mine has only 2 PCI ports, stereo sound output instead of 6-channel and only 2 USB ports). By the way I'm using it with a Williamette P4, but I don't think I'll have any troubles using a Prescott 2.8 P4 with 1MB of cache (the one I got offered). Thx a lot for the info of the motherboard, like I got it from a friend when he got a new one I don't have any kind of manuals...
What makes you say that your CPU is dying? It is VERY unusual for a CPU to die, unless you aren't cooling it adequately, or are giving it the wrong power - but then you need to sort out your setup, not just change CPU! What speed is your current processor? What you really want to think about is whether it will offer a significant performance increase. Obviously, if the CPU is really on its last legs, then the answer is yes, but I have rarely seen a CPU die (without good reason, anyway). That said, Willamette is between 1.3-2.0GHz, so it may be worth the upgrade. Your best upgrade would be RAM. What OS are you running, and how much RAM? If you're running XP, I'd recommend 1Gb+. Also, look at your hard drive's integrity and speed. Is it a 5400RPM or 7200? 5400s are just too slow now, really. Ultimately, it comes down to what you can afford. The best solution is to replace with a nice new 775 or AM2 board and DDR2 RAM - although I understand that not everyone can afford to do this. Selling the old parts to fund it may or may not work for you. And yes, the manual for just about every motherboard made can be found on manufacturers' websites ;-)
To start I have a 1.7 GHz Williamette P4. This model in paricular is known because of its heat troubles, if it's a bit hot or cold then starts working horribly, and with the pass of the years it becomes annoying as hell, after having the computer on for more than a day any sign of smoothness in videos or animations disappears. I'm running XP and I know 384 MB of PC133 RAM is not enough, but I never had this kind of troubles even when I had XP running on my old PIII with only 128MB of RAM. The computer is not slow, the trouble is the smoothness, it freezes about 1/10 sec every second in any video or animation. For the moment I don't have the money to buy a new motherboard, and with the travel to Argentina to see Dream Theater that I planned in almost no time (started planning it last week and it's next Monday) all the money I had stored for the CPU will be spent. I'm afraid I'll have to live another month with this damn processor...
I have a feeling, it's the motherboard. PCChips are not known to last for a good while. Still, I welcome the CPU upgrade and see if you still have problems. If you do, then either A) test the memory B)replace the motherboard.
Yeah PC Chips are awful a few years back I thought by hard drive, CPU and GPU were failing, turned out to be the MB in the end.
If PCChips motherboards have that kind of troubles I'll borrow a processor from some friend before changing my CPU, thx for the advice :icon_bigg Anyway I won't have this mobo for a long time, I need some PCI slots for a TV tuner and Firewire and the only 2 PCI slots are already occupied. One is taken by a network card i had to add when the integrated one died (now I understand the "fame" of PCChips MBs) and the other one is blocked by my video card's cooling fan. Maybe I'll have to sell my old PSOne to get some cash (I can sell it for about USD 100 here :033 and buy a new mobo with CPU and RAM, video can wait for the moment...
Although I'm not up to date with over seas prices, you should be able to pick up a fairly cheap Nforce board with decent enough intergrated graphics to get you by.
Yeah, you can get a cheap and cheerful board (e.g. ASRock) with integrated graphics (the AM2 ones even have a GeForce 6100 or some such), CPU and 1 GB RAM for around £100, which is $200 US (although I'm sure it'd be cheaper in the US). Have a look and see if Newegg ship to your country!
I don't need a great integrated graphics card. I'll buy a decent PCI-E as soon as I have the money, so any cheap LGA775 with DDR2, PCI-E and SATA2 support will do the job. The only trouble is that as I said tons of times before prices aren't the best ones here, so the best would be getting a credit card in order to buy the pieces outside before doing anything...
if your going for a LGA775 i'd like to suggest Asrock as i've used an asrock motherboard before and never had any trouble with it, They do have alot of 775 mobo's which support ddr2, pci-e and sata 2 and prices are quite resonable. That would get you by and it would allow you to then upgrade to a pci-e graphics and better cpu
That's the idea, a friend of mine has an Asrock mobo from the Conroe series and I have to say it works great and the performance is more than enough for what I need. Maybe I'll buy one of those with a Celeron D (or any cheap processor) and 1GB of RAM for later switching to a Core2 CPU and get a PCI-E graphics card.
Exactly what i've done/ am doing, i got a inno3D LGA775 mobo with onboard gfx and some memory for use with a p4 cpu so that i got a workin PC and when i can afford to i will buy a core2 cpu, more memory and a decent pci-e gfx card. Celeron D's are ok for general usage and can be quite cheap.
Alternatively you could change camp and give the AMD sempron ago, another great performer as far as budget CPU's go. And the AMD X2's aren't bad either when you look to upgrade.
AMD 64 LE is waay better than the Sempron. We don't really bother with Celerons much any more, to be honest. What we have left is pretty much dead stock.
